How to Backup your Emails from Yahoo! Mail Classic for Offline viewing

[c627627]

Just in case you didn't want to rely on "The Cloud" to keep your emails in tact, there used to be a program which no longer works: YahooPOPs! Their web site is still up, their forums are still up - even though the program does not work and it did not work for many years now.

There are many threads on how to set up Outlook to do this using the IMAP [not POP3] workaround. Using my quadruple boot and having both Office 2003 and Office 2013 installed, I managed to confirm that it does matter which version of Outlook you use and it does matter which version of Windows you use. Under Windows XP and Outlook 2003 I got it to work, but upon closer inspection, some messages and attachments could not be accessed when I disconnected the internet. I decided to cut my losses time-wise with Microsoft Outlook and instead use a much simpler and quicker method: Mozilla Thunderbird.

For the record, yes there is also a Zimbra / Backup4all option but it's not free after the trial ends so using freeware:

Mozilla Thunderbird 17.0.3 http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/


Double click on Thunderbird Setup 17.0.3.exe to install the program.

When prompted, select Skip this and use my existing email.



• IMPORTANT: Enable embedded images:

[Since malware can be embedded in images and spammers can verify your e-mail address by detecting if you downloaded embedded images, Thunderbird does not by default display images from senders not found in your address book. To display all images from any sender and automatically show all remote content:]

Right click on three horizontal lines in the upper left corner > CHECK: Menu Bar >
Tools > Options... > Advanced > General > Config Editor... > I'll be carefull, I promise! >
Paste the following next to Search:
mailnews.message_display.disable_remote_image
and double click on it to change its value from true to false.


• To Backup Yahoo! email:

Enter any Name, your full Yahoo! Email address and Password >
UNCHECK: Remember password (if only backing up Email) > Continue >
Select IMAP [not POP3] > Done

You need to click once on Inbox and EVERY OTHER SUBFOLDER to start downloading Yahoo! email to

Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles

or if using Windows XP:
Documents and Settings\<Windows user name>\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>


Thunderbird\Profiles location can be quickly located by going to Start Menu > Run > %APPDATA%


[In the bottom left corner of Thunderbird you can see the download progress, and also see a green download line on the right bottom. Wait for all messages to be downloaded in every sub-folder. The green download line will completely disappear when all messages are downloaded. Clicking once on any sub-folder will start the download process. You can click once on all sub-folders to queue all downloads.]



• To restore downloaded email, install Thunderbird then Start Menu > Run... >
thunderbird.exe -profilemanager -no-remote

> Create Profile... > Next > Choose Folder... > browse to backed up profile folder containing downloaded emails.



• To add another email account:

Right click on three horizontal lines in the upper left corner > CHECK: Menu Bar >

Tools > Account Settings > Account Actions > Add Mail Account... >
Enter your full Yahoo! Email address and Password > Continue >
Select IMAP [not POP3] > Done


By the way, selecting and removing account here does not delete downloaded email. It can be deleted manually from ImapMail folder which is inside your Thunderbird profile folder. Thunderbird\Profiles location can be quickly located by going to Start Menu > Run > %APPDATA%

 

[pwnmachine]

I don't personally use Yahoo but I know a few people who will definitely find this useful.

 

[c627627]

One other trick about Yahoo Email Classic is there is a way to permanently set the the old Classic look. Simply use Internet Explorer 6 (which cannot display the new look) and you will be prompted to either use the Classic look once or permanently. Once you choose permanently, you can use it from then on, on all new computers, from wherever you log in. You will need to find an old computer with IE6 installed to do this. Windows XP initial install comes with IE6.


When I first got the Yahoo account +/- 15 years ago, it was meant to be temporary. Then I tried Microsoft Hotmail and by default it wasn't set to save Sent emails. "Everyone" whoever got it found that out the hard way. Back then, to test the claim about Hotmail spam, I opened a test Hotmail account and never sent a single email to anyone or gave the email out. Nevertheless I begun receiving spam. So Hotmail was out.

I found Gmail to be "complicated" initially and never really went back to it. So I am still interested in reliable free email alternatives, but Yahoo seemed to be the best over these many years. It didn't erase the account after a short time of inactivity like most alternatives did.


Two other things that bothered me were:

1. Nauseous pictures rotating on Yahoo log in page, this was the last straw when I decided to do something about it, screen shot of Actual Yahoo Log in page when I decided I'd had enough:

Spoiler

I dealt with it through this Firefox add-on:
http://adblockplus.org/en/firefox

Ever since then my Yahoo Log in page looked like this:




2. Every day, whenever we log out of our Yahoo! Email, we are immediately taken to Yahoo's home page yahoo.com. There, our eye immediately catches the rotating top center one paragraph "Yahoo news".

Most of the time this "news" is neither educational nor relevant and always looks like it was picked out by an unpaid volunteer who recently dropped out of junior high school.


There are so many educational, interesting and relevant stories happening around the world if only Yahoo could display those top center, so that people can learn something interesting every time they log out of their Yahoo! Email.


I couldn't think of any other way to deal with that, except for writing to the CEO, which I just did.


Maybe blocking that would be the way out, I may do that in the future.

 

[c627627]

After logging out of Yahoo email - to stop being exposed to the Tabloid "news" headlines *every time* you log out of your Yahoo email, unfortunately the only solution is to block yahoo.com.


Again, this will not interfere with Yahoo email page. You will just not be able to display yahoo.com main page in any browser. So after you log out of Yahoo email, you will get a blank screen instead of Tabloid Yellow Page Trash of Yahoo.com's main page if you:

Disable any anti-virus program which protects your Hosts file from changes, then:

Notepad > File > Open >
C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts

Block yahoo.com by adding this line to the end of hosts file then File > Save

127.0.0.1 www.yahoo.com